Microsoft's Virtual PC.

[powerMarkymark]

Thinking of using Microsoft's Virtual PC for dual boot solution.

TIA

Marc

Langa Letter: Virtual Excellence: Microsoft's 'Virtual PC' Is Too Good Not To Check Out

 

[DnetMHZ]

I've used the trial version and it works pretty well. I had 2 or 3 instances of OpenBSD running on top of windows XP. Your not going to get the same performance as you would with a true dual boot setup, so it depends what you are going to be using the 2nd OS for.

 

[duragezic]

Well I have read that VMware is better for a linux guest than Virtual PC is at running linux, but I haven't tried Virtual PC myself. But it seems like the current version of VMware Tools is bugged for every friggin distro with the X-server and the mouse, so I just said f*ck it to VMware and went with a regular dual boot of linux and it was way easier and faster. Unless you are talking about dual-booting a different OS. But, YMMV.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's fine for most applications if you aren't in a hurry.

For something like Word where it's sitting idle 99.9% of the time waiting for you you won't see much of a slowdown.

For having Access or SQL Server crunch through a massive database to generate a report, you will.

VMWare is a little better IMHO since it gives you more control over the VMs, but performance is about the same for both, and if you already have MSDN you get Virtual PC "free."

 

[ttown]

I've been using vmware for almost a year -- and don't know how I ever lived without it.

Waaaayyyyy better than the dual boot thing, imo. virtual pc is the same thing conceptually -- but I've never used virtual-pc, so i don't know of the real differences.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

As long as you're planning on running a Microsoft OS, it's fine. VMWare takes it out behind the woodshed for running Nix/BSD.

- M4H

 

[DaveSimmons]

PS - I assume this isn't for gaming. The VM will not be usable for any modern games.

 

[WobbleWobble]

I found VirtualPC a little nicer to work with than VMWare.

VirtualPC is great with Microsoft OS's (as mentioned above). I tried to get Fedora Core 3 working on VirtualPC but couldn't and tried VMWare. Worked right away.

I also like how VMWare emulates Intel's 440BX (doesn't really matter, but I'm very partial to that one chipset)

 

[oog]

i'm running gentoo on virtual pc 2004 right now, and i previously got ubuntu running. i think there was a problem in the color depth detected by the ubuntu installation. just do a search on google for the emulated hardware, and it shouldn't be hard to load most linux distributions on it.